So true. Society has formed a horrible notion of stressing the importance of earning your degree(s) right after high school and in consecutive order.
at some point engineering doesn't matter, there simply won't be enough resources to keep everyone alive, much less with a decent standard of living.
how do we reconcile our innate capacity to continuously expand with a finite world?
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Rate_of_increa...
Aside from that, population pressures do build, but they can't just build forever. Eventually something happens (war, famine, technological breakthrough) that solves the problem in the short term. If we suddenly run out of some critical resource, that will suck for individuals, and the ensuing resource wars may take a terrible toll, but the race as a whole will survive and grow again.
How about colonizing space? Seriously. Do you think it will never happen?
Condoms.
Seriously, in keeping with the spirit of the OP, many people in the developing world can't even imagine a concept like "family planning" so they don't bother to do it. They just assume you keep having babies until you can't.
Maybe we should be less concerned with "One Laptop Per Child" and focus more on "Condoms for Couples". Then the laptop problem would solve itself.
If we all expected cars to double their efficiency every 2 years maybe people would be working on that just like they are working hard to double the number of transistors every 2 years.
That doesn't mean that huge advances are not possible - read Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken to learn how 250mpg cars are possible with current tech.
Here's the link:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.bes...
Ford CEO (#25) saying "Focus on the customer. Deliver value.". Neither of which they are respected for.
